to the Roman Catholic opinions. At the same time it must be observed, that not only is the catholicism of Germany less superstitious, less corrupted than that of most other countries of Europe, but the Catholics themselves have in many respects shewn a disposition to meet the Protestants half-way, and the two churches are on better terms at present than they have been since their grand separation. All this, it is unfortunately true, may conduct to doubt or indifference; but whatever indifference exists at present to religion in Germany, may be more safely ascribed to other causes. A more reasonable apprehension is that to which many Protestants are not insensible, that the cause of popery will be eventually a gainer, from the play which its system gives to religious feeling, and that fondness which is universal with the Germans for ceremony and parade. Nor do we know any solid ground of expecting a contrary result, except it be the increased dissemination of the Scriptures both among Protestants and Catholics, by the various Bible societies which, in imitation, and by the assistance, of England, are established in most parts of the empire. 6 Madame de Staël is mistaken in her supposition that the sect of Anabaptists, being rather revolutionary than religious, and owing their existence to political passions rather than opinions, passed away with the circumstances which had produced them.' Under the name of Mennonists, and with many of the peculiar tenets of the English Quakers and the American Dunkers, they are one of the most numerous, and decidedly the most mystical sect in Germany. The least rigid are distinguished by a remarkable plainness of dress; the more rigorous let their beards grow, and affect in all their actions an almost savage simplicity. In Westphalia, where they abound, they are distinguished by charity and hospitality, and by the primitive custom of washing the feet of whatever guests they receive. On the other hand, the theosophy of Jacob Boehmen, which she supposes to be still professed by many Germans, has not, we believe, a single avowed follower in the empire. As many of the higher ranks in Germany are inclined to regard religion as a picturesque ceremony, it is no wonder that some of them should shew a disposition to elevate ceremony into a kind of religion. We did however, experience a little surprise at finding under the general head of Religion and Enthusiasm, the convivial follies of free-masonry, and the fraudulent empiricism of the Illuminati and Ghostseers gravely entered as religious or philosophical sects. The first of these is naturally popular in a country where ribbons and decorations are held in so much honour; but it is chiefly, we believe, popular among those who have little else to think of; and though the tremendous dreams of the Abbé Barruel have clothed it in dragon scales, and excited against it in many kingdoms kingdoms of the continent a persecution as absurd as those mummeries which were the subject of alarm, free-masonry has remained in most parts of Germany as safe and innocuous as among ourselves. To deduce this association from that of the unfortunate Templars, is so completely in opposition to what we know of the history of both these bodies, that we may be well excused from refuting an opinion, which it is highly probable that Lessing its founder did not himself believe. The Illuminati were, as Madame de Staël observes, of two very distinct descriptions. One of these, of which Weishaupt and his colleagues were the heroes, was nothing more than a revolutionary club, such as the Corresponding Society of England, but which concealed itself a short time from the vengeance of government under the external mask of free-masonry. This was soon discovered, and has been long since eradicated: indeed the progress of the French revolution so completely undeceived the public mind of Europe, that the re-action thus produced was alone sufficient for its extinction. A few individuals of no good reputation have since attempted to organize fresh institutions of the same kind, but with a motive professedly Antigallican; and a German count, who some years ago visited London, vainly attempted to wheedle money from government for the maintenance of a secret order of knighthood, whose device was a dagger, two eyes, and a mouth closed by a padlock, and whose ramifications, as he boasted, extended over Europe. The other class of Illuminati are mere vagabond empirics, the lineal descendants of Cornelius Agrippa, of Kelly and Cagliostro. They may be found in all countries, but have been more noticed in Germany than elsewhere, because in the small societies into which the empire is divided, the arrival of a magician makes somewhat more noise than in such cities as London and Paris-and because the want of a military or political career, renders the German youth, from idleness, immoderately eager after novelty. These secret societies are not the only subjects apparently anomalous which our eloquent author has classed under the head of religion. Those who content themselves with inspecting her table of contents' will be surprised at finding two chapters' De la Douleur,' and De la Contemplation de la Nature;' and her work concludes with a laboured inquiry into the effects of enthusiasm on the conduct and happiness of mankind. The first of these, however, will be found a magnificent picture of the superior comforts which affliction may draw from Christianity above any which the world or philosophy can afford. The second is a devout, and, at the same time, a sensible attempt to found on the examination of the material world an internal conviction of the reality of that which is spi ritual, and contains passages which cannot be perused without a thrill of delight and veneration. * Souvent à l'aspect d'une belle contrée on est tenté de croire qu'elle a pour unique but d'exciter en nous des sentiments élevés et nobles. Je ne sais quel rapport existe entre les cieux et la fierté du cœur, entre les rayons de la lune qui reposent sur la montagne et le calme de la conscience, mais ces objets nous parlent un beau langage, et l'on peut s'abandonner au tressaillement qu'ils causent, l'ame s'en trouvera bien. Quand le soir, à l'extrémité du paysage, le ciel semble toucher de si près à la terre, l'imagination se figure, par delà l'horizon, un asyle de l'espérance, une patrie de l'amour, et la nature semble répéter silencieusement que l'homme est immortel. 'La succession continuelle de mort et de naissance, dont le monde physique est le théâtre, produiroit l'impression la plus douloureuse, si l'on ne croyoit pas y voir la trace de la résurrection de toutes choses, et c'est le véritable point de vue religieux de la contemplation de la nature que cette manière de la considérer. On finiroit par mourir de pitié si l'on se bornoit en tout à la terrible idée de l'irréparable: aucun animal ne périt sans qu'on puisse le regretter, aucun arbre ne tombe sans que l'idée qu'on ne le reverra plus dans sa beauté n'excite en nous une réflexion douloureuse. Enfin, les objets inanimés eux-mêmes font mal quand leur décadence oblige à s'en séparer: la maison, les meubles, qui ont servi à ceux que nous avons aimés, nous intéressent, et ces objets mêmes excitent en nous quelquefois une sorte de sympathie indépendante des souvenirs qu'ils retracent; on regrette la forme qu'on leur a connue, comme si cette forme en faisoit des êtres qui nous ont vu vivre, et qui devoient nous voir mourir. Si le temps n'avoit pas pour antidote l'éternité, on s'attacheroit à chaque moment pour le retenir, à chaque son pour le fixer, à chaque regard pour en prolonger l'éclat, et les jouissances n'existeroient que l'instant qu'il nous faut pour sentir qu'elles passent, et pour arroser de larmes leurs traces, que l'abîme des jours doit aussi dévorer.'-pp. 381, 382, 383. The third will not be understood till the idea which its title excites be defined more clearly. No word, indeed, has borne so many meanings as enthusiasm, and there is none which has been the object of fiercer censure or warmer praise, as it has been applied to different characters. At first, notwithstanding the sublime meaning which Madame de Staël elicits from its Greek derivation, it was employed to express the temporary delirium either felt or af fected by the Pagan priests under the influence of Bacchus, Apollo, or Cybele. It was afterwards, with much propriety, applied to the different sects who have in their turn adopted the feelings, if not the opinions, of mysticism; and, above all, to those who have sup posed the existence of an inward light, and conceived themselves the organs of immediate inspiration. When thus applied, there may, in enthusiasm, be much to pity, but there can surely be nothing which we should be led either to imitate or admire. There is no real real sublimity in madness, and those who have been delighted with its scenic or poetical imitation would lose their raptures, if they were to visit those asylums where it is confined, or those conventicles where it is engendered. But enthusiasm has been also applied to ardent affections of every. kind, by whatever excited, insomuch that by a very common caprice of language the metaphorical has, in common usage, nearly superseded the original meaning. In England it is chiefly used to signify intemperate or excessive zeal for a man's own opinions or his own profession, and has been properly or improperly applied in proportion as the person who employed the term was himself of a warm or cold disposition, attached, or otherwise, to the object which excited his neighbour's eagerness. In Germany, and indeed in most parts of the Continent, it bears a still milder signification, and can only mean, in Madame de Staël's concluding chapters, a susceptibility of warm and generous affections, a thirst of fame, an attachment to liberty, to religion, to truth, and to virtue, in opposition to that spirit of indifference to the welfare of mankind, which might be expected to succeed like a deadly calm to the storm of disappointed hopes and misdirected efforts. This would, in any country, be the natural effect of a revolution terminating in despotism; and in France, where the national character is far removed from all that ardour of fancy which converts the past and future (as it has been observed by Aristotle) into a faint perception of present enjoyment, the chill which would follow an unusual stimulus was, as might be expected, little less than mortal to the finer affections of the heart. To the existence and the cause of this deficiency Madame de Staël could not be insensible, and she has expressed herself in some passages with a boldness to which we should not have hesitated to ascribe her exile, had not the Parisian censors been remarkably, perhaps wilfully, blind to the obvious tendency of her allusions. This conclusion, indeed, both in the object at which it aims, and the force of talent which it displays, is well worthy of the daughter of Necker; and if it be less avowedly patriotic than the famous chapter in Longinus, of which it frequently reminds the reader, it exceeds this last considerably both in depth and dignity of feeling. It is the melody of a bird.who sings, in its lonely prison, of love and liberty; the untameable affection of those patriots who hope even when human hope appears to have perished, who, while they cannot look to enjoy political freedom themselves, recal the attention of their countrymen to those principles and virtues from which political freedom must eventually arise, who sow the seeds of a deliverance which cannot but be distant, and 'cast their bread upon the waters, that they may find it after many days.' We shall conclude by a few general observations, not on the beauties beauties of this extraordinary work, for on them our sentiments are, we apprehend, sufficiently apparent, but on what are much less obvious features-the faults which we conceive to pervade it. The most apparent of these is, perhaps, the too general and unmixed character of that praise which, when so lavishly bestowed, must diminish considerably in value. We do not blame her for the warmth of her zeal in so good a cause as the honour of Germany, but we cannot help regretting that she should have expressed herself so strongly as to resemble an apologist rather than an impartial observer. A constant ambition of style, which is too fond of refining and adorning every thing to give effect to the more prominent and interesting features of her description, is a second, and, perhaps, a more important failing: and there is a want of arrangement in her topics, and a tautology proceeding from this want, which almost convince us that the eloquence of her diction is spontaneous, and that she both thinks and composes with a rapidity which will derive no disadvantage from a critical drag-chain. These are, however, but petty faults when compared with the accuracy of taste, and 'ardentia verba' which we have had occasion to notice, or with that depth of thought and purity of sentiment which pervade the present volumes, and which have made the productions of her riper understanding as much superior to those which first introduced her to the world, as the fruits of morality and reason excel the morbid and feverish dictates of capricious impulse and unrestrained imagination. ART. V.-1. Some Account of the Life and Writings of James Benigne Bossuet, Bishop of Meaux. By Charles Butler, Esq. 8vo. pp. 180. London; Longman. 1812. 2. The Life of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. By Charles Butler, Esq. 8vo. pp. 238. London; Longman. 1810. THIS pair of portraits by the hand of a learned and ingenious Catholic layman, is evidently intended to represent the features of his own church under their most benignant and attractive aspect, at a period when it has once more become a candidate for no inconsiderable portion of its ancient influence in this country. The author has selected a couple of contemporary prelates, one the most acute and profound, the other the most elegant and devout that ever adorned the Catholic religion, in order, as it may be presumed, to demonstrate by example, that the doctrines of that church are not inconsistent with the highest reason, or its practices with the most exalted and cultivated piety. For the same purpose every thing revolting to Protestant ears or offensive to Protestant feeling |